


i'm the star in this disaster movie

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Communication Failure, Daisy and her hopeless crush on Coulson, F/M, Jealousy, Romance, Sleepy Cuddles, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, references to Coulson/Price, teary makeouts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 16:31:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5212874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daisy is not sure she can stay.</p>
<p>(aka more Dealing With 3x07 Fic)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm the star in this disaster movie

She's not sure she can stay anyway.

Even after their association with ATCU is finished.

Even after Rosalind Price's own association with ATCU is finished too (it won't be long until she finds a place in another shady organization, Daisy is sure).

If she is going to stay in Coulson's life somehow.

They're not professionally linked anymore and yet it seems like she's staying in his life.

Maybe it's childish but Daisy feels she can't stay.

She knows he's been in pain, just like her.

She had wanted to be the person he went to with that pain. Wanting, wanting, Daisy knows where that ends for her. Losing, losing. This is different. This is worse than anything before.

"Lincoln asked me to leave with him," she tells Coulson.

He doesn't even look surprised.

"You want to leave?" he asks.

She doesn't, but that would sound more like a confession right now and, really, what's the point.

They're in his office, Daisy feeling like every place is tainted now.

"Is it because of me?" he asks, too.

"Yeah."

He doesn't ask why she can't be around him anymore. She suspects he knows. She is mortified by the idea, because she herself is not sure what the real reason is, just that she can't keep going every day with this thing, this ugly incomprehensible thing pawing and tearing at her.

" _I_ could leave," he says. "You don't have to leave."

The offer is absurd, so absurd she wonders if he is mocking her. And if it's for real, well, it worries her, there's something really wrong with him.

"You're the Director," Daisy replies dryly. "They need you here."

"They don't. They need you more. My job... May can take charge. You could."

Under different circumstances she'd even be touched by his vote of confidence.

A bit selfishly she thinks she doesn't want him to leave. As long as he is in SHIELD, as long as he is SHIELD, there's a lifeline between them. And she doesn't want to give him up completely to Price. 

"Whatever you need to do," he says finally, leaning back against his desk. "If that's what you want."

Need, want. She tries to focus on the difference. She doesn't need Coulson. She _doesn't_ ,

"Okay."

"And you'll be safe with Lincoln. He's a good man," Coulson says, and Daisy almost resents the forced kindness because she knows Coulson doesn't quite believe it. "Just..."

"Just what?" she asks, impatiently, walking up to him until they're very close, like she is daring him to say it.

"Just not good enough for you," he tells her.

She wants to laugh in his face.

And if she is childish and petty then so is he.

She wants to laugh or cry or – 

Instead: quiet, ugly rage making her voice quieter and sharper.

"You have no right to say that," she warns him. "You of all people."

Coulson frowns. "What's that supposed to mean? _You of all people_?"

"Are you kidding me right now? Are you seriously–?"

Anger is a trite hot lava metaphor in the pit of her stomach, and anger clenches her fingers into a fist as she twists them into the collar of Coulson's shirt and pulls him, smashing their mouths together. That thing gnawing at her every time she saw Coulson with Price, she understands it now. This is it, this is the cause and the ruin of it all. Daisy knows she's destroying every last shred of hope for keeping Coulson in her life with this – but that only makes her hold on tighter, kiss him harder, to go with a bang, because if she is foolish at least she can end it on her own terms. She's so angry and so heartbroken she almost misses it when Coulson starts to kiss her back. And that's impossible. Coulson is not supposed to kiss back. Coulson doesn't want her, he has someone else, he doesn't want Daisy, he wants something else. But Coulson _is_ kissing her back, wrapping his hand around the back of her neck and holding her close, opening his mouth under Daisy's anger, swallowing it all, swallowing the tears from her frustration she hadn't noticed were running down her cheeks.

She pushes him away, but her fist is into gripping his clothes so she doesn't push him that far.

She widens her eyes at him.

"Please, don't leave," Coulson says, really quiet.

Well, I'm not going to leave _now_ , she thinks, a bit hysterical.

"What the...?"

Coulson looks like he is about to cry himself. She can't believe he almost made her walk away while he was holding back, hiding this, all this time. 

"Skye," he says, looking at her with adoration before he realizes his mistake. " _Daisy_ , sorry."

The slip-up only confirms it.

"You have been thinking about this for a while," she says, running her index across his throat.

"No, no, I didn't, I couldn't," Coulson tells her, holding her head in his hands. "I never thought... if I had... oh god, _Rosalind_ , I would have never. I swear."

He's very bad at compartimentalizing, but perhaps a lot better than Daisy suspected. Except with her.

"I was missing you," he adds. Daisy stares at him, confused. She's been right here the whole time, in front of him. "I knew I couldn't help you with that you were going through, and it was like pushing you away again, like last year, and I wanted..."

He trails off, his voice cracking. He looks shocked that this is happening, this could happen, and his words just slip out and pile one over the other. Daisy touches her fingers against the back of his hand while he still holds her.

"I missed you," he repeats.

"Is that why...?"

He drops his gaze.

"It wasn't simple but it was... _simpler_."

"God, Coulson, you're–"

"I know."

"I would have–" 

She is not sure what comes next. She would have listened at least. She would have wanted to end his loneliness and pain so badly. She would have wanted him to do the same for her. 

"I didn't know," Coulson says, kissing her again, urgent and sloppy, kisses that fall on the corner of her mouth, on the curve of her jaw.

"Hopeless. Hopeless and _stupid_ ," he mutters between kisses and Daisy is not sure what he is talking about. Reprimands keep falling off his mouth.

"Shut, shut up," Daisy tells him, kissing him, pressing her body against him against the desk.

Coulson smiles against the kiss, touching his lips against her with joy and disbelief. Daisy can read it in his vibrations – the same sort people get right before they laugh. She drops her hands to his chest, presses him against the edge of the desk even harder, and suddenly wants him so much it retroactively makes these past months even worse. She bites his bottom lip a bit and rest her hands on his hips. He can read the mood.

"I can't," he tells her, pushing her away.

Daisy groans, not preoccupied with dignity.

"Coulson, I swear, if you start reciting some stupid non-fraternization rule after what you–"

"No, no, of course not," he says, threading his fingers through her hair. God she wants him to touch her _everywhere_ and she is not sure how to tell her. "I meant I can't _right now_ ," he explains. "Not until I talk to Rosalind first."

Daisy steps back a bit. " _Oh_."

He touches her arms, drawing her back to him.

"It wasn't like that with her," Coulson says, choosing his tone carefully. Daisy resents him for trying not to be unkind, but it only lasts a moment. She realizes he has his fingers laced with hers, squeezing gently like he wants her to know he's with her, _completely_ , that she is his priority here. "And I know you must think I'm a horrible person but... I don't want to be that kind of horrible person. She deserves to know."

"I see."

"You understand?" he asks. Daisy suddenly realizes that if she asked him to stay and not go to her right now he would. 

"Yes, Phil, I understand."

She's not going to be childish and petty about this. She's seen what's really in Coulson's heart, that's what matters.

Suddenly he's putting on his jacket.

"You mean right now?" she asks. She looks at the hour, it's past ten.

"Yes, right now," he insists, walking up and down the office, retrieving his wallet, his ID. "It has to right now. I..." He stops in front of her. "This can't wait."

"Okay," Daisy says again, a bit dazed by the fast succession of events.

Coulson takes her face in his hands again –is this a favorite move of his? Daisy can't wait to see what his other moves are– and kisses her softly.

"Will you?" he asks. "Wait?"

He doesn't leave until he has an answer.

 

+

 

"So. Not to pry but... How did it go?" she asks when Coulson finally comes to her quarters, late, knocking softly on her door.

"I was afraid you might be already asleep," he tells her.

She is already in her pajamas but there was no way she was going to sleep tonight.

He doesn't talk that much about what went down with Price. Daisy guesses she's human after all – but only barely – and deserves the privacy. She gets the feeling from Coulson that nothing much went down and that's eating at him a bit and it makes her mad, because that's a part of what has been bothering her all along, Coulson settling for something that wouldn't even leave a mark. 

"I felt that it was safe," is the most he can explain right now, standing in the middle of the room and looking uncomfortable because of Daisy more than the break-up. She thinks he's trying not to seem cold or callous to her. Even if it's someone Daisy hates. It's like Coulson doesn't want her to think he'd treat someone he was involved with that badly.

"You know, it's weird," Daisy says. "This is the second time the guy I like tells me they slept with someone else because they could compartimentalize with them, but not with me."

It takes a beat for Coulson to catch up with what she's saying.

"Ward?" he asks softly. Daisy nods and his face falls with further realization. " _May_."

A very specific anger Coulson rarely lets anyone see flashes across his glance.

"He was just trying to manipulate me, I know. Still..."

"I didn't mean to remind you," he says. "I was choosing her over you. I know it must have felt that way. I didn't know it was a choice."

Daisy nods and he sounds a lot calmer now, not his mumbling, pathetic apologies while he kissed her. Though those were fine, too.

"But I realized we've never talked about what Ward did to me and... we haven't talked about many things, I guess," Daisy says.

"I agree."

She hugs her knees. "I think I'd like to talk about it. All of it."

"Now?" he asks.

"Do you mind?"

"Of course not," Coulson says, taking off his jacket and folding it over Daisy's chair. She smiles at the gesture.

He sits by her side on the bed.

Daisy doesn't mean to spend the whole night talking, but that's how it turns out.

They don't touch because touching would start a whole other something and Daisy wants to tell him stuff and Coulson looks like he wants to listen. Once or twice he slips his fingers over her wrist, when she goes over a specially difficult part. 

Coulson's feet get cold – Daisy is the one who spends the night talking but he makes a pause to explain about his arm, about his crappy blood flow now, like he is making a point of finally, finally talking to her about it, Daisy getting the feeling he hadn't before because he thought she'd feel guilty about it, and she does, but he seems to have decided telling her is more important. The thing is that his feet get cold and Daisy decides to share with his her old blanket, the one she bought five years ago for the van, one of her few precious possessions, and she tells him where it comes from, among some other silly stories from her past. There's this weird pajama party feeling when they get under the blanket together.

They get close – so much that it could be considered cuddling on a technicality. It's been such a long time since she's done this, felt this, even a small fraction of this and she guesses she can't quite blame Coulson for everything.

He has a couple of confessions of his own: why he put that tracker on Lincoln and justifying that and other things because he wanted results because Andrew was right and he was desperate and how he knew Daisy was having a hard time with the outbreak because she had caused it, but Coulson felt it wasn't enough to tell her it wasn't her fault, he wanted to _do something_ about it. They talk about all the stuff they should have talked about instead of trying to find solutions on their own.

Daisy wonder if they can really get back all the time they've wasted.

Then the sun starts coming up and they've been talking all night and she thinks _maybe_ as Coulson rests his arm over her waist.

 

+

 

Daisy strokes his chin, feeling the night's stubble nicely scratching against her fingertips. His eyelids look heavy and he looks suddenly older and softer.

"Are you tired?" she asks him.

"Not of listening to you," Coulson assures her, wrapping his hand around her wrist again. Daisy wonders if that's one of his moves, if it's something he likes doing to his – well, she's technically not his lover but it qualifies. Somehow she doesn't imagine him doing this with Price. Not just the wrist thing, the listening thing, everything, the history, the way he would go down an alien temple to be with her or the way he'd compare Daisy to the car he loves more than life. Maybe she can be a bit petty and childish now that she has Phil Coulson curled into her arms and dawn is about to break. Now that she has Phil Coulson.

"I think you should take the day off," she tells him, propping herself on her elbow to look at him.

Coulson blinks slowly. "Do we get those? I don't think we get those."

"You're the boss."

"Then maybe I will. I feel like I've been tired for a long time," he admits.

Daisy lies down again, pressing her cheek against the pillow. "I know what you mean."

She watches him; Coulson draws the blanket up to his nose, as if he wanted to hide under it. His eyes are closed. Daisy thinks about his pretty eyelids and then she thinks about how miserable he's made her these past months and gets a bit angry, but then she thinks about her blanket smelling like him and maybe that makes up for everything else, the quiet heaving of his chest as he breathes, ready to fall asleep on Daisy's bed.

"You're still not leaving, right?" he asks, voice heavy with exhaustion and with the lack of self-consciousness. His arm around Daisy's waist grips thighter. She's not sure he's going to remember having asked the question later.

"No one knows about the future but..." she says. "I can promise you I'll still be here when you wake up. Is that enough?"

Coulson smiles an open, sleepy smile. "That's enough."

Daisy thinks no, it's this moment, this is the one that makes up for everything.


End file.
